


learning to hate you as a self defense mechanism

by ocdranboo



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: F slur, Gen, Makeup, Misgendering, chloe is not nice here, lowercase aesthetic, not me writing thinly veiled vent fic again!, tag wranglers PKEASE dont tag relationships as pinkberry i beg of u also ily ur doing the lords work, title from a flatsound song, unrequited pinkberry, which is a topic the author knows nothing about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocdranboo/pseuds/ocdranboo
Summary: brooke learned to love chloe. brooke learned to hate chloe. one took a lot longer than the other.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	learning to hate you as a self defense mechanism

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a while ago and i figured id post it
> 
> also disclaimer chloe is not nice here! tw for slurs & misgendering & toxic friendships

_ [november 2015] _

brooke met chloe in sixth grade. the two of them shared the same homeroom and neither ever had partners for games they did, so they’d team up. they got to know each other fairly quickly, brooke asking lots of questions to hide the fact she didn’t really know herself. 

she never quite felt comfortable around chloe. at first she attributed it to her anxiety, and then to her growing crush on the other girl. maybe it was both. maybe it was neither. all she knew was that she was falling hard for chloe, and that chloe was the closest friend she’d ever had. 

_ [june 2018] _

“hey,” chloe said. “could you pass me the curler?”

brooke did so, sliding closer to the mirror to apply her mascara. she applied it with a steady hand, the years of practice paying off. 

“will you do my eyeliner?” chloe asked. “my hands shake, and i know you’re good at it.”

“sure,” said brooke. “what colour?” she rifled through the different shades and colours of eyeliner, wondering in the back of her mind how chloe had the money for all of them. 

“blue,” chloe said. 

brooke picked up the blue eyeliner and chloe stepped up to where she was, tilting her head up and closing her eyes. brooke felt her heart beat faster. she popped the cap off the eyeliner and then held chloe’s head steady with one hand as she drew careful triangles on her eyelids. she took a second longer than she needed to, admiring chloe, the way she was equally beautiful with or without makeup, the light freckles she was so ashamed of, the red undertone to her skin. 

“done,” she said quietly, letting go of chloe’s face and averting her eyes as chloe opened hers. 

“thank you,” chloe said, taking the mascara from where brooke had left it. 

“i think i’m done,” brooke said, admiring the look in the mirror. she’d only done lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara, but she still liked it. maybe she should add blush? 

“you’re not going to use concealer for your freckles?” chloe asked. 

“oh, i forgot,” brooke said, immediately picking up the concealer. this wasn’t true. she’d never once thought of covering up her freckles, in fact, she loved them. but when chloe said it, it seemed so logical. of course she was going to use concealer. how could she have ever thought differently? chloe was magnetic, and brooke wouldn’t let anything get in the way of being pulled closer to her. 

brooke put on foundation and concealer and finally blush, choosing a light pink and putting a touch on her nose as well. 

“it looks great,” chloe smiled at her, and brooke knew she’d made the right choice. what other choice was there? 

[october 2018]

“chloe’s kind of an asshole,” chloe’s sister amy admitted. “i don’t really get why you like her.”

“she is?” brooke asked. brooke didn’t think so, but she wasn’t amy. she couldn’t speak for amy’s experiences. 

“yeah,” amy said. “no offense, i mean, but… she is. god, like,” she pulled out her phone from her pocket, the case a velvety pink with a bear design.she rifled through texts before finding what she was looking for and passing her phone over. 

**amy:** hey could u do the dishes?

**chloe:** no lol

 **amy:** i dont mean to be rude but i have? the flu?

 **chloe:** no <3

“she’s just like that,” amy said. 

“huh,” brooke said. “damn. that was kind of a dick move.”

_ [january 2019] _

brooke regretted her relationship with dylan. she regretted almost every part of it. except the part that had brought her closer to chloe. 

chloe leaned against her shoulder as the two of them sat in the abandoned art room. the teacher wouldn’t show up until noon, and brooke had special permission to go in before and after school, as well as during study halls. normally, she wouldn’t have abused this power, but she didn’t want to see dylan, and with chloe, she felt like she could do anything. she was putty in chloe’s hands. 

chloe handed her an airpod and brooke took it. 

_ kiss me hard before you go _

_ summertime sadness _

_ i just wanted you to know _

_ that baby you’re the best _

_ i’ve got that summertime, summertime sadness _

“lana del rey,” brooke pointed out uselessly. 

“yeah,” chloe said. “billie eilish is next up, i think.”

brooke really appreciated chloe’s music taste. while not all of it was stuff brooke was super into, she loved being able to go on chloe’s spotify if she needed calmer music than her normal taste. 

chloe was right, billie eilish’s  _ xanny _ was the next song up. brooke didn’t know many billie eilish songs, but she’d listened to a few with chloe. 

“want gum?” chloe asked, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a pack. 

“sure.” brooke took one and crumpled up the silver wrapper, shoving it into her pocket. 

the two sat quietly, listening to the music as it faded out and into  _ falling for you _ by cigarettes after sex. 

“this song’s good,” brooke said. 

“yeah. most of their stuff is.” chloe popped a bubble with her gum, a stark contrast to the silence they’d had before. “dylan’s in my creative writing class. he wrote about you.”

“what’d he say?”

“mostly pretentious bullshit,” chloe said. “your brown eyes are the colour of the spines of the books in his library and you’re the only person who’s ever made him feel complete.”

“he’s so pretentious,” brooke said. “god, i hate him.”

“i do too,” chloe said. 

_ [april 2019 _ ]

chloe texted her out of nowhere, and brooke hesitated to respond for the sole reason she thought chloe was either drunk or texting the wrong person. 

**chloe:** Listen i don’t want to lie to u anymore. I really like u and i know u like me too. Do u wanna be girlfriends ??

no way. no fucking way. brooke put down her makeup brush and sat down on the floor of her bathroom, reading the text message over and over. no fucking way this was real. 

**brooke:** yes!! i do wanna be gfs

she sat there for ten, fifteen minutes, waiting for a response. nothing. she got up and continued her makeup routine, brushing foundation and concealer over her freckles. she drew little flowers by her eyes in blue and yellow eyeliner after she finished, just to add some extra flair. she checked her texts again. still nothing. 

the day went by. a week. the two spoke at school and on snapchat, not of their relationship status, but of anything else. it took chloe nearly a month to text back. 

**chloe:** Did ms. leigh give us homework?

_ [july 2019] _

“yeah,” chloe said, leaning across the table to steal one of jenna’s fries. “so my boyfriend and i”

brooke didn’t hear the rest, as her ears had filled with static. her boyfriend? chloe’s boyfriend? 

chloe didn’t have a boyfriend, because she was dating brooke…

...right?

maybe it  _ had _ been the wrong person, and chloe just hadn’t wanted to tell her. or a prank from someone who stole chloe’s phone. or maybe chloe had been drunk. 

_ so my boyfriend and i _

_ my boyfriend _

_ [october 2019] _

brooke wasn’t sure what she’d done wrong. what had changed. all she knew was that chloe seemed more distant than before. in an anxiety-induced fit of fear that managed to circle all the way back to bravery, she’d texted chloe about it. chloe had just responded that she was fine, she’d just had more homework than normal, she wasn’t ignoring brooke. 

but when she saw chloe talking to emma, who she’d never once spoken to before, ignoring brooke standing right behind her, it didn’t feel like chloe wasn’t ignoring her. 

[november 2019]

“she’s so annoying,” chloe said, her legs thrown on the bench in front of her. 

“i thought lex was nonbinary?” brooke prompted. she didn’t think, she knew, she and lex had talked about it a lot. 

chloe shrugged, and jay, chloe’s boyfriend, added, “i don’t really believe her, honestly.”

“she’s so annoying,” chloe continued. brooke was viscerally uncomfortable, her ears ringing slightly. “like,  _ why  _ is she so obsessed with us?”

“she’s so annoying about being gay, too,” jay added. 

“god, yeah. she’s such a faggot.”

jay laughed. chloe laughed. brooke felt infinitesimally small. she couldn’t figure out the humour in calling a fourteen year old a slur. 

and she couldn’t help but wonder, did chloe wait until she was out of the room before making fun of her? if brooke went to the bathroom to check her makeup, would chloe spend her brooke-free time calling her slurs? 

if chloe could be this mean to lex, could she be this mean to brooke, as well?

_ [december 2019] _

brooke had invited jenna and madeline to the mall, the three of them spending their pocket money right before christmas, which was arguably the worst time to go to the mall. nonetheless, the three had gone to sephora and aéropostale and claire’s and gotten a bunch of stuff. they were walking back to the food court to grab some milkshakes when they ran into chloe, one earbud in, her light pink dress hanging halfway down her thighs. 

“hi,” jenna said.

“hey, what’s up?” chloe’s eyes darted from jenna to medeline as if brooke wasn’t even there. 

“not much, we just got back from sephora,” madeline said. “how about you?”

“i’ve gotta drive my stupid brother home,” chloe jingled the car keys in one hand, “but he’s still in hot topic. it’s insane.”

brooke nodded and gave her mumbled agreement with the others and chloe looked down at her phone. 

“finally, he’s done. bye, guys!” she said, before walking off, her heels click-clicking on the linoleum floor. 

it was like chloe hadn’t even  _ seen _ her. brooke looked down at her arms as if to check if she was still there. she was. so why did chloe act like she was invisible?

_ [january 2020] _

brooke was staying over at jenna’s house for the night, the two of them drinking redbull and watching  _ black mirror _ . it was three in the morning when they decided to go to sleep. the two of them crammed into jenna’s tiny bathroom off the side of her room, jenna tugging a comb through her curls while brooke wiped the makeup off her face and started moisturizing as best she could with her travel sized bottle of moisturizer. 

“your freckles are so cute!” jenna exclaimed. 

brooke reached up to touch her cheek, as though she had forgotten they were there. “really?”

“yeah! you shouldn’t hide them, they’re adorable!”

“thank you,” brooke smiled at her. she believed it, too. it didn’t come as a shock to her that they were cute— she knew. it was one of the few features she actually really liked about herself. 

_ so then why do i cover them up _ ? she wondered. and the answer came to her almost immediately. chloe. chloe had told her to cover them, so she had. she hadn’t even questioned it. even though she liked her freckles, she’d let chloe’s perception of them make her hide them for years. 

brooke pulled her hair back into a messy braid and hopped up on the bathtub ledge as jenna went through her skincare routine. 

“what if i just stopped wearing concealer on my freckles?” brooke asked, half-rhetorical. 

“do it,” jenna said immediately. she tugged at a loose string on her pale pink crop top. “you look cute as hell. i think everyone else would think so too. and if they don’t, fuck ‘em. not literally.”

_ [march 2020] _

brooke showed up to school on the first day of march exactly how she wanted to look. her hair was its natural wavy, and she’d pulled it into a messy ponytail on the top of her head. she had yellow eyeshadow with thick red eyeliner and blue mascara and little flowers drawn over her cheeks, not to cover her freckles, but to go along side them. 

she walked in the door and looked right past where chloe usually stood, breaking into a half-jog when she saw jenna and lex buying drinks from the vending machine. 

“hey,” she said. 

“you look so cute! and happy,” lex said. “did you decide what to do about that girl who was upsetting you?”

brooke didn’t feel the need to turn back, didn’t hesitate in her answer. “yes,” she said, and she smiled as she did, “i think i have.”

**Author's Note:**

> im not writing vent fic YOURE writing vent fic /j
> 
> follow me @ocdranboo on tumblr for the occasional be more chill content amidst my current hyperfixation


End file.
